


In My Skin

by Luminous_Bluebell



Series: Actual Walking Disaster Children [5]
Category: Newsies (1992)
Genre: Gen, Trans character of color, Trans girl Bumlets, trans boy Jack Kelly
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-31
Updated: 2016-10-16
Packaged: 2018-05-30 09:47:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6418978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luminous_Bluebell/pseuds/Luminous_Bluebell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It might cost him his roommate, but if it means he can help someone who was stuck in the same miserable spot he'd been in, well, as long as Bumlets could express herself more comfortably, he'd be absolutely fine with that. They had to stick together, after all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Honestly, I'm genderfluid, so I have no actual idea how to write a trans girl character. I've also never lived in a group home but I'm trying to do as much research as I can with the accounts I've stumbled across. If I get something wrong, I claim creative license.

Being in a group home meant learning a lot of things. Some, people would give him sad looks for. Others made him want to give people the sad looks… but he knew better. Nobody who was stuck in the same place as he was  _ needed _ the tragic, teary-eyed, ‘ah poor you’ look directed at ‘em. Not like it would fix why they were all here in the first place. Ok. Maybe the littler kids could use that kinda coddling, but he wasn't around the little kids so much. 

He didn't learn as much about them as he did the kids like him. 

Originally he shared a room with this girl, Smalls, but when he started really growing into himself and the itching under his skin got to be Too Much and he insisted that no,  _ his name is Jack Kelly _ , he got a new one. Same layout, same bed, practically the same mattress… but across the entire building and with a roommate about his size. 

Bumlets, apparently. 

They got along decently enough. Jack kept himself and his mess to his side of the room, Bumlets kept to… drawing, reading, quiet things mostly, until it was dinner time and everyone had to make their way down to the dining room. Then it was something like organized chaos. Everyone was loud and rowdy but not like they actually hated each other just… like it was a bunch of teenage boys sitting in one place, which is exactly what it was. 

That's when Bumlets got a little louder, a little more animated, but to Jack it seemed forced. He could see how tightly wound Bumlets got, the tightness around their eyes and the smiles they gave that looked a lot more like grimaces. It was hard not to notice when Bumlets was sitting right next to him. 

It wasn't the Done Thing, but Jack liked to think of himself as a halfway decent guy, at least, so at some point he was going to try and talk to his roommate about what was up. There had to be at least  _ some _ way he could help.

  
  


He had an opportunity to bring it up after school the next day. Kloppman was one of the better group home directors they’d had, and gave them a fairly generous allowance in return for doing chores around the house and yard that they could use to fund exactly one extracurricular of their choice. For Jack, it was art classes. With the allowance they were given? Bumlets was careful enough with the money to take up fencing, and both were offered at a community center not too far away, so they had some time to make small talk before the van came to pick them up. 

Bumlets, rather than talking, picked at a loose thread at the hem of their sleeve. Jack figured that was a good a time as any. “ ‘s the matter with your shirt? ‘s it botherin ya?”

“No! I, uh, I mean, nah it's just-” Bumlets fussed with their sleeve, rearranged it some to straighten out the sleeves. “It’s good.”

“Ya know, that don't look like it fits you too good.” Bumlets gave Jack a quizzical look. None of the kids had clothes that fit, so theirs wouldn't make a difference. “I got some that might suit ya better.” And he’d been holding on for them for so long, they didn't really hold meaning anymore. Bumlets shrugged, dismissing the matter as Jack just being weird, but Jack held on to the idea.    
  


He brought it up again when he noticed that Bumlets was growing their hair out. They started getting more boisterous, almost to try and hide something going on, but Jack had been the kid’s roommate for months now. He had  _ eyes _ . 

Jack was gonna go about this in a way that was a bit unconventional. It might work, it might not, but he had to give it a chance.

“Hey Bumlets,” he hesitated, gripping the small glass bottle by its plastic cap in his clammy palm, “I was talkin to this girl after class, and we got to talkin about different kinds of art.”

“Ok?” Bumlets looked down at Jack's clenched fist, then back up at Jack from their spot on the bed where they’d been reading.

“I can't practice it on myself because I don't have the skill to do it on both my hands yet, so would ya mind - ?” he held up a small bottle of nail polish. “I have the remover too.”

It was the first genuine smile he got from Bumlets since rooming with the kid.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this update is so short. Evidently I got bitten by a small inspiration bug this time. Again, I'm more in Jack's shoes than Bumlets' so if any of this feels inaccurate or offensive let me know I guess.

Surprisingly, it wasn’t him that brought up the subject the next time. Bumlets started getting bolder with their color choices for nail polish. Jack dragged a brush full of lavender nail polish in vertical stripes down their thumbnail when they started talking.

“Hey, Jack?” Their voice was a little more quiet, subdued, and he was really focusing so it took a few tries to shake it. “Jack?”

“Huh?” It was pretty quiet in the room aside from their breathing and the small  _ tic tic _ of the brush dipping into the bottle, so it wasn’t like conversation was unwelcome. 

Bumlets fussed a bit with the hem of their shorts. Jack continued to paint their nails as he waited. “How did you know?”

And there it was. The shoe he was waiting to drop had dropped and this conversation was going to happen now apparently. “How’d I know what?”

“You know… that…” Bumlets gestured vaguely with their free hand, trying to get the words out. “How did you know that you weren’t supposed to be…” 

“How’d I know I’m a guy, you mean?” Bumlets inhaled and tensed visibly like they weren’t sure where this conversation was going to go. “Honestly? For a while I didn’t.”

The look he got in response would have been comical if he didn’t look exactly like that before. “Honest, I didn’t! I thought that it was normal, you know? Like I was just being some sort of hardcore tomboy. I just was who I was and it wasn’t a problem,” he shrugged, dipping the brush into the bottle again. The more casual he could be about being him, the better it was for everyone involved in this conversation. “It actually wasn’t even a real big thing until a while  _ after _ I hit puberty. Like, I wasn’t exactly comfortable with people thinkin I was a girl, but it wasn’t a major problem. It was just… kinda like getting a pebble stuck under the sole of your shoe and not being able to find it. Annoying, but you can live with it.”

“So then,” Bumlets looked at him with a confused frown, trying to process what he was saying. “What made you decide to change?” 

  
Jack felt something loosen in his chest. This was the most Bumlets had said to him - or probably ever - at one time, and they were asking for help he could actually  _ give _ . This was huge. “I uh, talked to Kloppman, actually. Started getting more annoyed and he made me realize… I  _ didn’t _ have to live with it. And, look I don’t wanna assume but,” he really didn’t want to be wrong about this. Even if they were both safe and secured in their own room, he didn’t want to go clocking someone else. “Uh, if you were to find yourself with that rock in your shoe… you don’t have to live with it either.” 


End file.
